HSF confirmed the slightly increased bid via a formal release today, a little over two weeks after Concord officially bowed out of the acquisition battle. This high-stakes competition for the entirety of Hipgnosis Songs Fund – encompassing the rights to the work of Shakira, Barry Manilow, Timbaland, and a number of others – seemingly marks the final chapter in the entity’s turbulent story.
Source: Blackstone Ups Hipgnosis Songs Fund Offer to $1.31 Per Share
For Mestel, buying up rights wholesale is a mistake. He says Primary Wave typically buys 50% or 60% of a catalogue because they want to collaborate on their plans with the actual artist (or their estate). “We want the artists as a partner,” he says. “So it’s easier for us to buy than, let’s say, somebody like Hipgnosis or Blackstone who have to overpay because they don’t have an infrastructure.”
For all the sturm und drang around the unlicensed use of copyrighted works to train AI models there sure seem to be a lot of licensing deals being discussed all of a sudden, for access to copyrighted works to train AI models. In just the past two weeks, OpenAI has signed licensing deals with Wall Street Journal publisher News Corp., Vox Media and The Atlantic for access to their archives for training, and we’ve seen reports that Meta, Alphabet and OpenAI are all in conversations with the Hollywood studios about licensing movie and television footage.
In the few months before that, we saw deals between OpenAI and the Financial Times, and Reddit sign with both Google and OpenAI. Photo agencies and archives have also been actively striking deals with AI companies over the past few months, including Shutterstock, Photobucket and Flickr.
The Federal Court has issued a landmark decision (Blacklock’s Reports v. Attorney General of Canada) on copyright’s anti-circumvention rules which concludes that digital locks should not trump fair dealing. Rather, the two must co-exist in harmony, leading to an interpretation that users can still rely on fair dealing even in cases involving those digital locks.
The Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcer issued a warning Thursday to tech companies working in artificial intelligence, cautioning that they could face action from regulators if they don’t find a way to fairly compensate artists, entertainers and other creators.
Source: DOJ antitrust chief warns AI companies that they must fairly compensate artists
OpenAI announced pacts with two more media companies — Vox Media and The Atlantic — to license their content for the ChatGPT artificial-intelligence chatbot. Under the deals, the companies also will work with OpenAI on a range of product-development initiatives.
Source: OpenAI Inks Licensing Deals to Bring Vox Media, The Atlantic Content to ChatGPT
An exemption under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act should be expanded to include generative artificial intelligence research focused specifically on embedded biases in AI systems and models, a top Senate Democrat argued in a new letter to the Library of Congress.
Source: Senate Democrat pushes for expansion to copyright act to include generative AI research
News Corp.’s deal with OpenAI supports the contention by the New York Times that publishers should be paid when their work is used for AI, Times lawyers say. “The Times is pleased to see that OpenAI increasingly acknowledges this industry-wide problem and is paying publishers for their work,” a Times spokesperson told Legaltech News.
Source: Publishers Daily: News Corp. Deal With OpenAI Proves ‘NY Times’ Suit Is Right, Lawyers Say
The seemingly endless possibilities of generative AI are not on an unavoidable collision course with copyright law; the collision happened way back and sooner or later, someone will have to pick up the bill. In the meantime, popular LLMs seem to be developing a stubborn, pro-copyright streak, partly due to all the industry propaganda they’ve been consuming. But don’t fight back, it’s time to team up.
Source: AI Models Reveal Pro-Copyright Bias By Shutting Down Piracy Research * TorrentFreak
Financial Times chief executive John Ridding has told other news publishers they “have leverage and should insist on payment” from AI companies. His words for the industry at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen came one month after the Financial Times became the first UK news publisher to announce a licensing deal with OpenAI.
Source: FT CEO: News orgs ‘have leverage and should insist on payment’ from AI companies